palandri
Retired Moderator
Closest exoplanet that may contain life is approximately 11.4 light years away. 1 light year = 9460730472580800 metres.
List of nearest terrestrial exoplanet candidates - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thing is, they may contain life but intelligent life capable of building communication devices similar to our own is a further stretch. Even though there's probably trillions and trillions of exoplanets how many have life that is intelligent is a question we can't answer. We know intelligence is rare from an evolutionary point of view.
List of interstellar radio messages - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thing is we have all sorts of issues relating to all this. First is we have the issue of similar frequencies, similar technology, etc. The other thing, any signal we may receive could be from a long dead race from thousands of years ago.
Also, depends what you mean by contact I guess. Physical? Unless they posses some type of technology or knowledge we don't and can get to our little uninteresting solar system on the edge of the spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy then I don't see it really happening.
You make an excellent point by asking what I meant by contact. I should have been more specific. Finding a meteor is actually extraterrestrial contact. :grin:
Let's start with simple microbial life. Do you think it's possible to find it within our solar system? Our Moon has frozen water at the poles. Mars has water below the surface. Jupiter's moon Europa is suppose to have an ocean below all the ice. I think where ever these is water, there's a strong possibility of some type of microbial life.
Then I suppose we could move on to some type of radio contact with intelligent life. :excited: